Watched Saturday Night Live (SNL) last night. Melissa McCarthy was guest host and her opening theme was Mothers Day and she even brought a middle-aged Mom out of the audience, probably planted there, as part of her opening routine. She provided a backstage tour for the Mom and offered a glimpse of the inner workings SNL, Lorne Michael's amazingly durable comedy show. That was fun, and reminded the viewers that the show really is theater, somewhat reminiscent of any other kind of live theater but with the addition of TV cameras and a national audience.
Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump has become a regular feature of the opening minutes of the show and last night was no exception. Trump's interview with Lester Holt about the firing of James Comey was recreated-- an event that happened only a day or two earlier. Things move faster. The real Donald Trump felt the need to get quickly to the airwaves when he saw the country meltdown in reaction to the Comey decision. The Trump/Holt interview went out to the entire country, maybe the world, and was rapidly absorbed into the nation's collective conscious. The news volley, much like a tennis match, flies quickly and comedy must follow suit. Anything too old in the 24/7 news cycle would not work well for the SNL parody.
Michael Che playing Lester Holt did an awesome job capturing the even-keeled television newsman. The comic summoned up Holt so accurately-- big forehead, cool, friendly, but always professional, the expressionless expression, had a certain hysterical quality. The real Lester Holt must be about as far as you can get from a SNL skit. And Michael Che actually does the "Weekend Update" segment for SNL so has some of the news anchor instincts already built in.
Baldwin was good as always and made the point that Trump is kind of a mini-Nixon, not exactly my position on the issue. But having Speaker Paul Ryan show up as an overly solicitous, ass-kissing soda fountain jerk with two scoops of ice-cream for Donald Trump was ingenious. Donald insists on two scoops of ice-cream because Richard Nixon only got one scoop of ice-cream. Baldwin and the writers had captured the Donald Trump narcissism and the Republicans fear of offending Trump with great comic efficiency.
So this skit earned an A grade-- but made me wonder about the hurry up nature of our existence-- even comedy must reflect events from only a day or two ago... or it becomes old news.
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